Interview with Jared Duval

Jared is one of the premier student organizers in the country. I met him at the National Resources Council of Maine's annual meeting. I mainly talked with him about the Climate Action Club, but he let me ask him my I-Search question. He gave me an answer that I had not found during my research.
First all, he started by saying how global warming can't become the central cultural issue of my generation. Jared said that this wasn't possible if we just talked about fighting climate change. He said that we had to act and do something to stop global warming.
Jared then went on to say that global warming needs to "be part of a vision that speaks to other cultural issues." He also said that "global warming is part of an anxiety that people feel." But, the true root of these feelings is how fast our world is changing. People have "more concern for economic opportunity." Jared concluded by saying that if you connected climate change to a sense of economic anxiety, then it can become more of a central issue. It needs to be a "national effort," and we need to focus on new technologies like "wind and solar power." Jared stressed that we "need to move away from fossil fuels." It is vital to "connect people's aspirations for a better economy."
I completely agree with Jared's answer. It is also very different from any other conclusion that I have come to. I definitely think that connecting global warming to the economy will be a major step towards making it one of the central cultural issues of our generation.
I am very aware that there are other vital issues in our world today. Famine, war, disease, and so much more. But, I think that the environment should be an extremely prominent issues because all of our current problems will seem small compared to what will happen if we do not fight global warming. I think this is a very important point for people to understand when they read this blog and start to take a stance against climate change.
Jared included a quote by John Kenneth Galbraith in this interview. "All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.” It directly speaks to what Jared told me.